Rey and Kylo struggling against the imperial guard dudes, and not using the force at all. Like, both of them are powerfully enough (even if Rey isn't trained) to pick the guards up and drop them down the inevitable endless hole that is present in every star wars lair, but instead they just go for straightforward swordfight and almost lose.

Spoiler:

This is just in keeping with all the other films. It's pretty much only ever been droids that we see killed by lifting with the force and very few characters even move other people with the force (Snoke's the main one, Luke and Leia moves themselves, and I guess Vader's choke kinda counts?).

Maybe moving sentient beings is particularly difficult (maybe because they have some connection to the force so can attempt to resist)?

Spoiler:

That's fair, to an extent (though it's similar to gripes I have with other superheros where they power down to the level of the competition). But without establishing that, and showing various people get flung around (Kylo does it too - unless there's something special about high ranking Empire personnel that makes them vulnerable?), it feels like something easy to establish. It just felt particularly egregious since these were allegedly the two most powerful jedi around. Definitely would have been interesting to see the red dudes resist, since that would have been in keeping with their badassery.

Spoiler:

Wait, wait. Where in any of the previous movies have force users ever been able to fling other force users around with the force? They can fling objects at them, and use that blue lightning, but I don't think they ever directly affect each other with the force. I would assume that they can't, that being force sensitive makes you immune to being directly manipulated.

And in all movies, even if they sometimes use rocks or lightning, the preferred method of fighting between force users has always been light sabers. Why is this suddenly weird in the 8th movie?

I thought the red dudes were the other students who left with Kylo Ren after he murdered the ones who didn't join him?

That was my impression also.

Spoiler:

If the red dudes aren't the 'Knights of Ren' then where are the Knights and what have they been up to this whole time?

Spoiler:

It was some dumb throwaway line as another weak attempt at world-building.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

If the red dudes aren't the 'Knights of Ren' then where are the Knights and what have they been up to this whole time?.

Spoiler:

You say "Knights of Ren" and all I can think of is "Space Madness" and the "Happy Helmet" (Ren & Stimpy).

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I thought the red dudes were the other students who left with Kylo Ren after he murdered the ones who didn't join him?

That was my impression also.

Spoiler:

If the red dudes aren't the 'Knights of Ren' then where are the Knights and what have they been up to this whole time?

Spoiler:

I don't know about the Knights, but the red dudes were clearly snoke's honor guard.

Where did you even get the impression that any of the other students survived, Angua?

Spoiler:

Snoke's honor guard can't be the Knights of Ren?

Also, It was stated multiple times, I think across both movies but definitely in TLJ, that when Kylo left Luke's new Jedi Academy he took some number of the other students with him, and those students became the Knights of Ren.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Also, It was stated multiple times, I think across both movies but definitely in TLJ, that when Kylo left Luke's new Jedi Academy he took some number of the other students with him, and those students became the Knights of Ren.

Also, It was stated multiple times, I think across both movies but definitely in TLJ, that when Kylo left Luke's new Jedi Academy he took some number of the other students with him, and those students became the Knights of Ren.

In TLJ, when Luke is explaining what happened to the Academy and it's students, he explicitly says some of the students sided with Ben/Kylo and killed the rest of the students. The wiki you linked says it was the Knights of Ren who killed the students, ergo the Knights of Ren are the students that left the academy with Ben/Kylo.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Apparently (according to Wookiepedia) the guys in red are the Praetorian Guard, not the Knights of Stimpy..err..Ren.

I think the thing is that the new movies don't draw such a bright line between "Force User" and "Non Force User", but rather there's a continuum from a full-"Jedi/Sith/etc." force user all the way down to "force blind". The original trilogy and the prequels only demonstrate a fairly narrow band of force power, but the new movies are exploring a broader bandwidth of ability levels.

To wit: Chirrut Imwe (the blind character in Rogue One) was fairly strong in the Force, but wasn't able to influence minds, or throw objects around but was certainly Force-Sensitive enough to be effective in blaster-combat with a melee weapon/combat style. I'd think Finn falls in to a similar area, though less so than Chirrut: Finn's not using the force to compensate for blindness, but he was able to (more or less) hold his own in a firefight armed with nothing but a lightsaber. Phasma (again IMO) is on par with Finn as a force sensitive, which makes the 'rivalry' between the two make a sort of narrative sense...

Spoiler:

... and why appearances aside I'm not sure we've seen the last of her.

Likewise Rey is throwing rocks around in ways that put Yoda and the other Jedi Masters (who typically only Force-Push one object at a time as opposed to juggling large piles of debris without breaking a sweat) to shame.

If that's the case the Praetorian Guard are probably (and I'd guess always have been even under Palapatine) low(er) level force sensitives than the "Full Jedi" power levels running around like Vader, Sidious, or Luke.

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that's quite a convoluted interpretation. they wouldn't already have been the KoR at that time, so saying that the KoR killed the adepts when their killers only turned into them later would be strange. also, we haven't seen a single force user except our protagonists yet. (well, the boy at the end)

Also, It was stated multiple times, I think across both movies but definitely in TLJ, that when Kylo left Luke's new Jedi Academy he took some number of the other students with him, and those students became the Knights of Ren.

In TLJ, when Luke is explaining what happened to the Academy and it's students, he explicitly says some of the students sided with Ben/Kylo and killed the rest of the students. The wiki you linked says it was the Knights of Ren who killed the students, ergo the Knights of Ren are the students that left the academy with Ben/Kylo.

Spoiler:

Yeah, Luke definitely says that Kylo Ren took some students with him and they killed the rest. I suppose they don't have to be the guys in red, but it made the most sense given there don't seem to be any other force users around.

Crabtree's bludgeon: “no set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated”

The dudes in red are a pretty clear callback to the Emperors Imperial Guards who also wore red.

The only time we've seen the Knights of Ren, they've worn black and there've only be 7 of them (including Kylo) rather than the 8 guards Snoke has in his chamber.

It would seem odd for him to have guards answering to Kylo rather than directly to him; even if he doesn't suspect betrayal, he clearly doesn't consider Kylo competent. They also wear black outfits much more like Kylo's than the Red Snoke's guards wear and there's much more variety. The weapons of Snoke's guards are also much more similar to those of the Imperial Guards than the Knights of Ren (who all weird different weapons and some of these are ranged, unlike the guards who all wield melee weapons)

Info from TLJ:

Spoiler:

We are indeed told that Kylo took some other students (I think we might actually have a number but I'm not sure) and killed the rest. Given the framing of our vision of the Knights of Ren being pretty similar to our views of the destruction of the New Jedi Temple I think we're meant to conclude that those other students became the other Knights of Ren although that would leave open the question of why they don't seem to be using light sabres or, for some of them, even melee weapons.

Is there any kind of concrete information that Disney is doing the current Star Wars property as discrete (somewhat) self-contained trilogies with a narrative arc and thematic focus (like the prequels and original trilogy), or are they doing it... "Sitcom style" for lack of a better term, where the writers come up with this week's year's plot and script, it gets filmed and then the writers start work on the next episode movie as long as the contract keeps getting renewed until Fonzie Finn jumps over a shark sarlacc on a motorcycle speeder bike and the audience fades away disgusted with the turn of the property and arguing where the last good episode was and how it all went wrong?

The last few movies (ep. 7 and 8)... I don't know, but to me at least it feels terribly like the latter more than the former.

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Disney is going to milk this franchise for all they can get. As far as I know, episodes VII, VIII and IX are supposed to be a discrete trilogy, but I have no doubt there will be episodes X-∞ in addition to the 'Star Wars Stories' like Rogue One and the upcoming Han Solo movie, and more TV shows, comics and novels as well.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

My understanding is that this was planned as a trilogy with the intent to produce a bunch of spin-offs - unfortunately, it's hard to find clear details. Since the Star Wars brand is largely based on a trilogy format, I don't expect them to break from that. I do expect this to set up for a fourth trilogy.

The next thing planned is a trilogy set much farther in the future. I've got fairly high hopes for it (I don't know why).

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

I suppose my thought is more along the lines of the narrative arc and thematic focus rather than on the mechanical adherence to the three-movie-format. IE: When Lucas was initially coming up with the Star Wars universe he had plotted out a large part of the first two trilogies (IIRC he had a third trilogy in the works, but that got shelved as the Extended Universe novels came out with one that he felt was better or somesuch). By plotting out the big story arcs ahead of time the original trilogy (and the prequels for that matter) managed to maintain a narrative focus on their big themes (the Fall of Anakin and the Jedi in the Prequels, the Redemption of the Skywalker family through Luke in the original trilogy).

The last two trilogy movies (ep 7 and 8, not R1) feel like two different thematic foci are competing for screen time, like someone didn't really do a lot of planning ahead as to which story they're trying to tell and is having to make a lot of compromises because of it.

Spoiler:

You've got the high-powered, even one might argue mythological tale of Rey and Kylo clearly setting up the backstory for a new Jedi/Sith dynamic in the future (even the idea that Kylo invited Rey to "be his queen and we'll rule together" has an almost mythological fairy-tale feel to it), meanwhile they're also trying to tell the "gritty underside" story with Finn, Rose and Phasma of the chaos created by rebellions, the hypocrisy of war profiteering, and generally taking the shine off of the "Rebels are good guys" trope. (Rogue One did this as well, but it was a fairly central theme to the movie and wasn't competing for time with mythic-level Jedi).

I'd compare and contrast Babylon 5. The Shadow War was an arc of mythic proportions with pretty clearly defined Good Vs. Evil, where the Earth Rebellion arc was more gritty, a lot more "The guys on the other side are our brothers" kind of flavor, and Straczynski did a good job of comparing and contrasting the two themes. Admittedly he had five seasons and over 110 hours to do it in, the third Star Wars trilogy will be attempting it in less than a tenth of that much time.

But even acknowledging the time constraints the most recent trilogy.. IMO anyway.. doesn't really seem to be handling the dichotomy of their themes well. They feel like two completely different themes that just happen to be crammed in to one over-busy storyline, rather than an artful examination of the difference between myth and reality.

And I'd just read something that Ep.9 was supposed to incorporate facets from all three trilogies to kind of wrap everything up in a cohesive package.. which makes me twitchy when (again IMO) they're fumbling with trying to get one trilogy to fit a cohesive theme and narrative.

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And I'd just read something that Ep.9 was supposed to incorporate facets from all three trilogies to kind of wrap everything up in a cohesive package.. which makes me twitchy when (again IMO) they're fumbling with trying to get one trilogy to fit a cohesive theme and narrative.

Ep.7 wasted a lot of time in the middle and end establishing itself as Star Wars. I thought the first third or so was fairly good, but once they got to creating the beginnings of an arc it struggled between rehashing Ep.4 and setting up the next two episodes.

Finn seemed like a minor character in Ep.8, weirdly.

Spoiler:

Maybe because his and Rose's mission wound up being quite counterproductive.

The gradations of Force-connection they've been working with in the new films would be more interesting if they started applying it to the light-dark spectrum as well. Snoke is all about rejecting the Sith, but he's just as blindly evil. Parts of the Extended Universe were all about moral grey areas, with folks like Grey Jedi who really did embody balance, but they don't make for great antagonists.

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Dauric wrote:I suppose my thought is more along the lines of the narrative arc and thematic focus rather than on the mechanical adherence to the three-movie-format. IE: When Lucas was initially coming up with the Star Wars universe he had plotted out a large part of the first two trilogies (IIRC he had a third trilogy in the works, but that got shelved as the Extended Universe novels came out with one that he felt was better or somesuch). By plotting out the big story arcs ahead of time the original trilogy (and the prequels for that matter) managed to maintain a narrative focus on their big themes (the Fall of Anakin and the Jedi in the Prequels, the Redemption of the Skywalker family through Luke in the original trilogy).

To be fair, Lucas said and did a lot of different things with those movies. Vader wasn't Anakin Skywalker in the original ESB draft. I mean just watching the movie you can clearly see they didn't even take all of that stuff out since there's a scene with the Emperor and Vader talking where the Emperor says "I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker". Really the fact he kept his name AND lived on his father's planet with his actual Aunt and Uncle is clearly a huge plot hole if Lucas planned Vader being his father from the start.

Yeah both the original scene and the redone scene don't make much sense with Vader being the Skywalker they're talking about. I didn't realize the first one I watched was the changed one. Frankly it's even worse then, you'd think he would have FIXED that clunky dialogue in the remastered editions.

bentheimmigrant wrote:I don't have a huge problem with it, considering it alongside the whole new identity thing they had going on with Darth Vader... Talking about past self as a third person could work.

Yeah, between taking a new name as a symbol of separation from your prior self, taking a new name to protect yourself from anyone investigating your past for weaknesses, and taking a new name to increase your air of menace and mystery, there's plenty of good reasons for the Emperor and Vader to talk about "Anakin Skywalker" as though he were another person entirely - after all, they both know (and both know they know) exactly who they're talking about, but doing it this way doesn't give anything away to anyone else who may be listening, and keeps the distinction between Anakin (promising young Jedi) and Vader (Sith who betrayed and murdered the Jedi) in Vader's own mind too.

TAKE a glance at Rotten Tomatoes’ page for The Last Jedi and you’ll quickly discover a huge divide.

An incredible 93 per cent of critics loved the new Star Wars movie. The audience? Not so much. But there could be more to the 55 per cent fan score than meets the eye.

An angry Star Wars fan is taking the credit for pushing the number down, claiming to have used bots to create Facebook accounts that logged into Rotten Tomatoes and posted negative reviews of the film.

The 55 per cent score certainly marks a huge discrepancy from the data compiled by CinemaScore, whose survey of theatregoers on The Last Jedi’s opening night gave it an ‘A’ rating.

Internet sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic really have a sample bias problem too. You'll get a lot more of the extreme viewpoints being shared. Someone who REALLY disliked it will probably be more likely to post than someone who felt it was ok, but not great. For Rotten Tomatoes this is particularly bad since it's a "Good or not" choice.

When it comes to things like Star Wars, Star Trek or other things with rabid fanbases they're even worse since you don't even have to have seen the movie to vote.

Indeed. If I'm looking for a fun action movie, I'll often put more stock into the audience score than the critics. Similarly I would imagine that plenty of SW fans would trust other fans more than critics.

Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. After some thinking I had one major gripe and would like to hear thoughts on this:

Spoiler:

I am having a huge problem with using the republic ship as a lightspeed battering ram to destroy Snoke's capital ship for a few reasons. It's like the writers had this cool idea but didn't stop to think about its ramifications. If this is possible, why didn't the woman at the helm turn the ship around and destroy Snokes ship immediately after all the escape pods were jetisoned? And that question is minor compared to the bigger can of worms this opens. If we can go to lightspeed and ram our ships into other ships.... why didn't we do this to destroy the deathstar? The mass of a single Tie-Fighter moving at light speed would have been enough to destroy it. Furthermore, what even is the purpose of the Deathstar if taking a ship and ramming it into a planet at light speed is an option? I completely understand in sci-fi that you have to take some things with a grain of salt and just accept them. But the writers introducing this technique as viable raises major questions about virtually every other star wars film.

i'm pretty sure it is not like a mass moving at relativistic speeds, SW physics don't work that way. still, they could have done the same with every other ship instead of letting them be shot down, and more than that: why do they not have FTL torpedoes?

Note: i'm not terribly versed in Star Wars physics specifically, so I write from a more general Sci-Fi perspective

Why not turn the cruiser as soon as the smaller ships left? Remember that the First Order ships couldn't see the smaller vessels until the hacker was brought on board and he made a deal to upgrade their sensors in exchange for his freedom (and a hefty hunk of cash) The cruiser had to maintain the illusion that it was still carrying the Rebels by maintaining a fleeing course. Once the smaller vessels were being targeted it was clear that the ruse was up and fleeing in an empty cruiser wasn't fooling anyone.

Why not ram ship in to other ships as warheads all the time? There's a couple of possible reasons. 1) when a ship has actually made the jump to hyperspace it's not able to interact with objects in normal space. The impact has to be precisely timed for optimal velocity just before the 'missile' passes in to hyperspace. Given that in most Sci-Fi universes there's a significant (often related to local gravity well) margin of error in those calculations it's not a reliably accurate targeting method, indeed it's the kind of thing you might only do in desperate circumstances and when both missile and target are large enough to hit that critical pre-jump intersection within the margin of error for jump calculations.

2) squishy-mortal pilots tend to not like being used as bullets and war A.I. in the Star Wars universe tends to be... quirky. Neither is desirable in a guidance system.

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Dauric's explanation is quite reasonable but I think the question itself is fundamentally flawed. Star Wars is not and has never been science fiction by which I mean specifically that the big inspirations for the franchise are early 20th century space operas, WW2 and chilvaric romance. None of the "technology" in Star Wars makes a lick of sense, it is has never been internally consistent and has even less connection to the actual physics of our Universe.

So keeping that in mind, my answer is that

Spoiler:

ramming the rebel ship into Snoke's cruiser worked because in WWII ramming a ship was still possible. Under normal circumstances their guns would destroy you long before you could do that and/or they would take evasive measures but no one expected such an antiquated move that only worked because the First Order were fully focused on shooting down the rebel pods in lieu of destroying or evading the ramming ship. This is also why the collision caused the super-dreadnought or whatever to start taking on water space and some magazine reactor explosions while everyone ran for lifeboats pods.

Now would a real spaceship work in any way remotely similar to this? No, not at all but that applies to everything that ever happens in space in any of the movies. Rebel bombers inspired by B-52s wouldn't drop bombs because there is no gravity in space; X-wings wouldn't go more aerodynamic for speed because there is no resistance in a vacuum; a piece of junk smuggling transport ship wouldn't be the most powerful, maneuverable and durable fighter ever seen on screen; lumbering awkward slow AT-ATs wouldn't exist when the Empire already has spaceships capable of flying in atmosphere the size of an AT-AT's head with comparable or greater firepower; no one would build a Death Star when regular heavy cruisers already heavily outgun the rebels and no planet has a hope of standing up to the Empire in a direct confrontation regardless.

maybeagnostic wrote: None of the "technology" in Star Wars makes a lick of sense, it is has never been internally consistent and has even less connection to the actual physics of our Universe.

This is broadly an issue with the vast majority of Sci-Fi though, Star Wars is hardly alone in the existence of spacecraft that don't behave as they would in reality and inspirations in ship tactics taken from great-ship battles of WWII. Star Trek is arguably just as bad about "magical dohickies" like "Heisenberg Compensators" and "Particles of the Week". Babylon 5, which receives generally high marks for starship design realism tends to have space battles reminiscent of WWII pacific carrier battles. Space above and Beyond, Farscape, Killjoys, Firefly... The list of Sci-Fi absurdities occupies the vast majority of the field.

If anything Star Wars, for all it's contrivances, doesn't really violate scientific realism -because it never claimed any in the first place-. It's a Space Fantasy tale with Space Wizards and Laser Swords. It embraces the idea that the technology is so sufficiently advanced that it looks a lot like magic, and runs with it gleefully through fields of the fantastic and surreal.

.... now that said:

but I think the question itself is fundamentally flawed

This depends on what you think the question actually is.

If you're thinking the question has to do with categorizing Star Wars as Science Fiction (hard or soft) rather than Space Fantasy then sure it's a flawed question. However the question can also be taken as "How much Suspension of Disbelief need I spend on X", in which case it's perfectly reasonable.

An audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief is a limited currency. Too many contrivances, too many absurdities (especially in the face of audience expectations) and you can lose their willing participation in your story. To that end reasonable answers to such questions can lessen the amount of suspension of disbelief spent, leaving more ability to suspend disbelief on the Space Wizards and their Laser Swords.

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even a fairy tale like SW ought to be internally consistent. if you pull a magic superweapon out of your ass after 2 hours of running away, you have to expect the audience to ask why you didn't do so earlier.